5) Sandman – Thomas Haden Church, Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 sadly let the side down after the brilliance of Spider-Man 2, as it mistakenly increased the goofy humour, sentimentality and villain count from the previous films. The result meant that both Harry Osborn’s New Goblin and Venom ended up falling flat.
The movie’s other villain, Sandman, somehow made it out with some dignity intact. Sure, it’s an eye-rolling twist that he’s in fact Uncle Ben’s real killer, and the sick daughter backstory is a little much, but the character is still a highly sympathetic bad guy and is brought to live by both a good performance from Thomas Haden Church and some (mostly) amazing CGI that’s still impressive even today.
The character’s best scene is, of course, where Flint Marko is first affected by the matter dispersal experiment and he becomes Sandman. In fact, it’s probably the single best part of the whole movie.